Electives

Innovation is an important part of the UNC Kenan-Flagler culture. Every year, 20% of the electives we offer are new. This practice ensures that emerging topics in business and faculty research are quickly reflected in the curriculum. You may begin taking electives as early as module III of your first year.

A sample of our most popular electives of the past 2 years is grouped below.

Accounting

• Managerial Accounting [Show More]Managerial accounting provides information for decision making, product–costing, and planning-control-evaluation activities. This course takes the perspective of both the user and the preparer of accounting information. The emphasis is on the fundamental concepts and the strategic importance of accounting data to managerial activity with special consideration given to the underlying accounting procedures and the underlying accounting processes.

  During this course, you should specifically:

  • Develop an appreciation for the role of accounting data in decision making, product-costing, and planning-control-evaluation activities;
  • Embrace an understanding of the data accumulation process in order to facilitate effective communication between managers and accountants;
  • Master specific techniques for using a myriad of accounting information in multiple situations; and
  • Internalize contemporary concerns with respect to U.S. productivity and the world economy along with implications for information systems.

  Teaching Methods:
  A significant amount of group and case work.

  Materials Covered:

  • Product Costing and the Manufacturing Environment
  • Activity Cost Analysis and Planning
  • Profitability Analysis and Planning
  • Contribution Analysis for Decision Making
  • Operational Budgeting
  • Performance Assessment
  • Strategic Management of Price, Cost, and Quality
  • Profitability of Strategic Business Segments
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• Complex Deals [Show More]This course develops sophisticated users of financial information. The ability of students to read and utilize information in corporate financial statements and to understand the economic essence of important classes of complex business transactions will dramatically increase. The course applies insights from financial economic theory to explore important issues of corporate governance, organizational design, risk management and managerial incentives and behavior. Many fascinating deals and transactions will be examined, focusing on understanding the economic underpinning of a transaction and its accounting representation in the firm's financial statements. The course approach strips away all unnecessary bookkeeping to focus on grasping the transformation of economic events into accounting information. The material encompasses many recent developments in the world, including cutting edge research findings not yet reflected in existing textbooks, recent accounting scandals or international developments.

  The course will benefit a number of constituencies, including bankers, strategy consultants and deal makers who must understand the economic and accounting implications of varying a deal's structure or make valuation estimates using accounting information; investors and analysts who rely on financial information to guide investment decisions; and corporate managers who must achieve financial reporting objectives, or use financial statement information in formulating strategies and discerning the strategies and situations of competitors.

  The course format involves a mixture of lecture and case discussion. Grades will be determined on the basis of four exams spread evenly over the course.

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• Financial Statement Analysis [Show More]Financial Statement Analysis is an applied perspective on analyzing financial statements. There are three main skills students will lean upon completion of this course:
  1. Earnings management - how and why managers can move earnings up and down using accounting tricks, and how to detect and adjust for this.
  2. Profitability analysis - how to decompose a firm’s overall profitability into its key elements in order to tell whether the firm is really making money or losing money, where this is happening, and why it is happening.
  3. Statement analysis - how to pull apart a firm’s financial statements and footnotes so that its major business activities and results are clearly visible.

  Financial Statement Analysis is designed to be particularly useful for finance-oriented first-year students preparing for summer internships. The course is also valuable for second-years looking at consulting, corporate finance, entrepreneurship, general management, investment and marketing careers. The course complements, not repeats, material in related courses such as Financial Accounting, Advanced Financial Reporting I and II, Complex Deals and Tax Strategy.

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• Tax Strategy [Show More]

  The objective of this course is to understand how taxes affect business decisions.

  MBA courses generally ignore taxes. When taxes are discussed, the depth of the analysis usually stops with some profound thought, such as “Less taxes are better than more taxes.”

  We will develop a more useful framework using three key themes:

  • Effective tax strategy considers the tax implications for all parties to a transaction;
  • Effective tax strategy considers both the actual taxes paid and the lower returns on tax-favored investments (think lower interest rates on municipal bonds);
  • Effective tax strategy recognizes that taxes represent only one (perhaps minor) cost, among many other business costs.

  We will then apply the framework to a host of business decisions, such as investments, compensation, organizational form, equity valuation, multinational ventures, family wealth planning, etc. You will leave with a new approach to thinking about taxes (and all forms of government intervention), which will be valuable even as laws and governments change.

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• Taxes in Finance [Show More]

  Part of being financially savvy is having an understanding of how taxation affects business decisions, e.g., forming a corporation and raising capital, operating the firm, distributing cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, expanding through acquisition, and divesting lines of business. Taxes have a direct impact on cash flow and often divert 30% to 40% of the firm's pretax cash flow to the government, making the government the single largest stakeholder in many firms. Having an understanding of taxation and how firms plan accordingly is important for just about any career path you choose, whether you will be a an investment banker, venture capitalist, consultant, money manager, CFO, treasurer, controller, taking over a family-owned business, or as an entrepreneur setting up a new business. Taxes are everywhere and it pays to have some understanding of them.

  A recurring theme will be linking the tax strategies that we learn with concepts from corporate finance, financial accounting, business law, and economics. We make extensive use of real transactions to illustrate the impact of tax structure on earnings and cash flow. I think you will find that people who understand the tax consequences and trade-offs of decisions have a distinct advantage in the marketplace.

  Specific topics include:

  1. Tax planning fundamentals
  2. Taxation of corporate operations and financing
  3. Tax information in the financial statements
  4. Taxation of mergers and acquisitions
  5. Taxation of divestitures
  6. International taxation
  7. High wealth tax planning
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• Topics in Advanced Financial Reporting [Show More]

  This course will show students how to account for stock options, income taxes, pensions, leases, derivatives, financial instruments, and asset securitizations. The focus will be on enabling students to extract information from financial statement disclosures, including footnotes, for purposes of equity valuation and financial statement analysis. Many of the topics covered in the course relate to accounting standards that have been both controversial (e.g., the pension and stock option standards) and are currently being reconsidered by the FASB and their international counterpart, the IASB (e.g., asset securitizations). The course will draw on current deliberations by accounting standard setters, and will help students understand the political landscape of standards setting in relation to prominent and controversial events in the financial markets, such as the mortgage market collapse. The course is highly recommended for students concentrating in corporate finance or investments, and complements several electives in accounting and finance including equity valuation and financial statement analysis. The course covers several accounting topics that are also on the CFA exam.

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Finance

• Fundamental Principles of Corporate Finance [Show More]Fundamental Principles of Corporate Finance is a more advanced course in corporate finance theory and policy. The aim of the course is to rigorously analyze the major issues affecting the financial policy of a modern corporation, such as the choice of its capital structure, dividend policy, share issuance and repurchase and corporate governance system. We will critically discuss costs and benefits of the strategies available to a firm’s top management to address these issues effectively. The course will also examine private equity and venture capital, and the process of raising capital through IPOs and SEOs. The course will conclude with a discussion of the role of corporate financial risk management. Classroom presentation will be mainly theoretical, but will illustrate the main concepts with examples drawn from the real world. Exposition will be analytical, and a working knowledge of basic mathematics and statistics is assumed.

  Prerequisites: BA 280A, BA 280B

  *This course is limited to first-year students

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• Investment Banking [Show More]This course is designed to prepare first-year MBA students for investment banking internships. The main focus of the class is on financial modeling. The first two classes consist mostly of preparation for the financial modeling workshops (led by the class Teaching Assistants), and last for approximately three hours. There are six four-hour workshop sessions. These workshops are led by Scott Rostan, founder and CEO of Teaching the Street, a company that provides financial modeling instruction to a number of major investment banks. Areas to be covered are financial analysis and projections, use of comparables, valuation methods, etc. We will learn about topics including income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statement projections; depreciation, amortization and working capital schedules; public company comparables analysis; discounted flow analysis and valuation; and recent events concerning investment banking. In feedback from the major investment banks, we are consistently told that financial modeling is the most critical area to master before IB internships.

  The secondary emphasis of this course will be on general knowledge of investment banking and what it takes to succeed as an IB professional.

  The class will meet for one 1½ hours on those days when the Rostan-led workshops are not scheduled. We plan to have several prominent bankers and corporate executives as outside speakers. If needed, some of the regular classes are scheduled as financial modeling review/practice sessions. The course is graded pass/fail.

  The primary target for this course is first-year MBAs with IB internships. The course has also proven helpful to MBAs with corporate finance internships or jobs.

  Prerequisites: none

  *First-year MBAs are given preference for admission to this class but second-year MBAs are eligible.
  *this course is computer-supported, e.g. using computer simulation, special databases, and other high-tech components.

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• Real Estate Process [Show More]

  The Real Estate Process introduces students to the basic concepts of real estate. This course provides a background on the concepts of urban and spatial economics, analysis of markets, valuation, law, development, capital markets and investment analysis. It also familiarizes students with the vocabulary of real estate and exposes them to real-world decision making processes through a series of case studies. Students in this course will build the foundation needed to be successful in the highly competitive summer internship job market.

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• Mergers and Acquisitions [Show More]

  Mergers, Acquisitions and Corporate Restructuring have a dramatic impact on most corporations. Many managers will either directly or indirectly face the challenges brought on by these changes in corporate structure. These mergers that induce change provide an opportunity for gaining insight into key corporate issues.

  The objective of this course is to learn the financial techniques to analyze the valuation and structuring of corporate mergers and acquisitions, with an application of financial theory to solve a set of case studies in strategic decision areas. Students will form study groups to examine and analyze assigned cases for class discussions.

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• Applied Corporate Finance [Show More]

  The objective of this course is to learn how to resolve real corporate finance problems with the help of analysis, theory and judgment and in the context of a corporation's business strategy. Topics include valuation, capital structure, dividends, share repurchases, raising capital, financing and applications of options in Corporate Finance. This is a case study-based course, and students will form study groups to examine and analyze case studies for each topic covered in the course.

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• Portfolio Management [Show More]

  This course covers the basics of portfolio management of financial assets. Particular attention is paid to the process of developing an appropriate investor policy statement; using investment theory to construct an efficient portfolio, and the methods for monitoring and rebalancing the portfolio. The course also covers the ethics required of investment professionals. This course covers much of the material required for the portfolio management section of the CFA exam. Past or concurrent enrollment in the Investments course is highly recommended.

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Innovation and Sustainable Enterprise

• Business Innovation & the Digital Age [Show More]

  Global competitive pressures, emerging economies, saturated domestic markets and demanding customers have brought companies (especially multinationals) to a dire crossroad – innovate or die. Innovation has been presented as the panacea for the severe turbulence of the new global economy – the “flat world”. Almost all the companies have embarked on their innovation journey. Some have adopted innovation as a tag line in their advertising. Others have started to appoint executives in charge of innovation. However, very few companies actually innovate! But nearly any and every action taken by a company is now loosely labeled as innovation. This could very well be the case because innovation is very poorly understood. This course seeks to address this issue by focusing on fundamental issues of: what is innovation and how do successful companies innovate.

  This course is designed to provide you a strategic, broad and multidisciplinary perspective of business innovations (especially the digital age information technology based innovations) and how they are changing industries, enterprises' business processes and their relationship with suppliers and customers. We will examine broad classes of innovations, patterns of change initiated by digital age innovations, and best practices with respect to the adoption, implementation, and use of innovations. We will also examine how organizations are developing innovative business models around innovations to adapt to rapid changes in the marketplace. In summary, these areas of focus will provide you useful frameworks for understanding the business impact and opportunities that innovations (especially digital age innovation) bring about.

  Perhaps the most dramatic shift in business during the early years of the 21 st century is the rise and fall of the dot.com sector. Unfortunately, many business executives have mistaken the fall of the dot.com for the fall of technology. As evidenced by the recent interest and investment in technology by business, nothing could be further from reality. Technology marches on and, to be successful, business leaders must be prepared to assess the coming waves of technology.

  The first few years of the new millennium have been witness to the development of several emerging information technologies. These technologies have gone from being nascent “in-the-lab” to having an “in-the-field” impact. In the coming years, the impact of these emerging innovative information technologies will only become more and more pronounced in our networked information intensive economy. It is the intent of the course to prepare you to deploy, manage and preempt the disruptions caused by business innovations in the digital economy of 21st century.

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• Sustainable Enterprise [Show More]

  Objectives:

  • Understand the challenges of co-alignment among business, society, and environment.
  • Examine the history and context of sustainable development as a model and perspective for commerce.
  • Explore alternative models of business and innovation pursed by sustainable enterprises.
  • Discover best practices in leadership and transformation.
  • Survey models of innovation in community competitiveness, technology, products, and revenue models to support next generation business.

  Materials Covered: This course examines the origins, evolution, and current schools of thought around sustainable development. Study and discussion of sustainability as a theory of industrial development and accompanying models of commerce provides a context for understanding current models of business and its effects on other systems. The course also focuses on strategy, leadership, and innovation as applied to the Sustainable Enterprise. Through example as well as application of management theory, we will examine how today's leaders are creating programs of transformation for competition in the “next” generation of industry and commerce.

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• Investment Strategy for Sustainability [Show More]

  This seminar course will look at current best practice by asset owners and their asset managers in integrating and aligning environmental, social and corporate governance factors [ESG] into portfolio strategies and investment analysis, including:

  • Defining “socially responsible investing” [SRI]
  • Identifying parameters of ESG investment mandates
  • Assessing the market opportunity set for SRI across asset classes
  • Fundamentals of ESG research for investors
  • Performance measurement and metrics of portfolios
  • Expected environmental and social impact
  • Addressing trends in global SRI

  Students will develop intellectual frameworks for understanding: the market drivers for SRI in the U.S.; current best practices of SRI and ESG analysis; ESG analysis as extra-financial research for fundamental analysts, especially on capital structure of the firm, WACC, Beta, discount rate, risk management; models for quantifying the financial impacts of social/environmental decisions; assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a portfolio strategy.

  The seminar will appeal to students pursuing an understanding of strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR)/sustainability and money management. CSR/sustainability strategists will improve their understanding of the critical role of investors. Students of money management will develop their understanding in either of the two major functions in money management: firstly, understanding the market for SRI and ESG integration, and secondly, the frameworks and best practice for analyzing companies for ESG performance and their execution of CSR.

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• Product Stewardship & Sustainability [Show More]

  This course will cover various elements related to the current and growing issues associated with "product stewardship” as demonstrated through current company examples and case studies. These elements impact salability, product and stakeholder risk, competitive advantage and sustainable growth. Topics include product stewardship risk assessment and management, product safety and regulatory/non-regulatory considerations (including in specific areas such as green building, biotech, nanotech, agriculture, climate change, etc.), opportunities for growth and competitive advantage through product stewardship, and product stewardship management systems.

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• Effective Virtual Teams [Show More]

  Two forces are simultaneously changing the managerial structures and activities in companies: 1.) the increasing need for creative work to produce innovative products and services, and 2.) the complete globalization of companies, which requires them to compete in multiple diverse markets simultaneously. In order to respond to these two opportunities, companies are deploying virtual teams to bring together their globally distributed expertise - their remote "sensing" outposts - without the luxury of frequent travel. Members of these virtual teams are entrusted with the task of innovating without co-locating.

  This course is designed to provide you with a taste of the above-mentioned environment working on creativity in creative ways (i.e. virtual teams). The intention is to not only provide you with an experience of working in and managing virtual teams, but also more importantly working on an innovative task in such virtual environments. Working in such a "bleeding edge¨ environment will give you the edge in the ever-evolving dynamic marketplace.

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Management

• Corporate Strategy [Show More]

  This course covers the fundamentals of corporate-level strategy as opposed to business-level strategy. “Business-level” (business) strategy deals with achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage in a discrete and identifiable business. “Corporate-level” (corporate) strategy deals with the way a company creates value through the selection of a portfolio of businesses and the configuration and coordination of these businesses.

  The primary way in which corporate strategy ultimately creates value is through increasing the ability of businesses in the portfolio to create and sustain a competitive advantage. For example, sharing manufacturing activities may reduce costs. Alternatively, sharing a strong brand may increase differentiation while reducing overall marketing costs. Hence there is a very close relationship between business and corporate strategy. We will be using the tools that you acquired in the business strategy course (MBA 250) extensively. In addition we will be utilizing some tools that you have acquired in other required core courses. The major topics we will cover are diversification (related and unrelated), vertical integration, restructuring, synergy, alliance strategy, and global strategy. We will be introducing a variety of tools to help us analyze these topics.

  The primary objective of the course is to introduce you to the primary decisions, tools, and concepts of corporate strategy. By the end of the course you should be able to:

  1. Understand how multi-business firms can create and destroy value.
  2. Be able to engage in a thoughtful discussion of corporate strategy with senior executives.
  3. Be able to identify opportunities to improve corporate strategy.
  4. Understand and be able to analyze the major benefits and risks of various diversification strategies.
  5. Understand the economic and organizational realities behind the term “synergy.” Be able to identify and analyze synergy opportunities.
  6. Understand the role alliances play in corporate strategy. Be able to analyze the major tradeoffs between alliances and acquisitions.
  7. Understand the role a particular business plays in a corporate strategy.
  8. Understand the nature and strategic implications of both regional/global rationalization and local responsiveness in global strategy.
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• Leading Organizational Change [Show More]

  Leading Organizational Change helps students become effective change agents and leaders of change in organizations. It is to help management consultants working to transform organizations, those working in mergers and acquisitions understand the dynamics of change in new and merged organizations, investment bankers assess plans for restructuring organizations, and general managers understand how to assess the need for and the implications of change to their organizations. Other topics will be: the roles of change agents and leaders; how to build a case for change and develop a "guiding coalition" within an organization; how to deal with resistance to change and how to affect the change in culture that will lead to enduring change.

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• Negotiations [Show More]

  Negotiations offers a basic introduction to negotiation with a heavy emphasis on the development of practical skills. Among other things, this course seeks to develop student capabilities in (a) analyzing your negotiation style, (b) planning for negotiations, (c) dealing with strong emotions, (e) employing "principled" negotiation techniques, and (f) assessing negotiations.

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• Power, Politics, and Leadership [Show More]

  Power, Politics, and Leadership studies of how power is used within organizations. We examine the major advanced leadership issues dealing with managing your boss, managerial sabotage, managerial succession, changing difficult subordinates, gaining promotions, office politics, how to manage a successful career and life. Live, complex cases will be used to develop key principles of leadership.

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• Leading and Managing [Show More]

  This course is about the science of human thought and behavior, and its applications to business. We draw on theories from psychology, sociology, and economics to enhance your ability to understand, and hence predict, how you, and those around you, are likely to think and behave.

  Why do you need such skills, you ask? Although skills in finance, accounting, marketing, operations, and strategy are crucial for organizational success, the ability to manage an organization, its groups, and its individuals is equally important. As you pursue your careers, you will inevitably depend on people to accomplish organizational goals; you will need to work for other people, work with other people, and supervise other people. For this reason, an understanding of the human side of management is an essential complement to the technical skills you are learning in other core business courses.

  How does all this relate to “leading and managing?” By definition, a leader must have followers. This means that to be a leader, you need to understand how to motivate, inspire, and influence other people. You need to assemble the skills, talents, and resources of individuals and groups in ways that best solve the organizational problem(s) at hand. You must make things happen, and often under conditions or timeframes not of your own choosing. Leaders must also understand how to introduce their own skills and abilities into their teams. The successful execution of these goals requires leaders to be able to effectively diagnose problems, make smart decisions, influence and motivate others, wield power effectively, and drive organizational change. In other words, you need a thorough understanding of your own behavior, the behaviors of those around you, and how one impacts the other. Thus, this is not a class designed to teach you everything you need to know about leadership (we have some other activities and electives in the program that focus on this topic more specifically). Rather, this is a class that gives you some fundamental insight into human thought and action, and this insight is one core competency, among many, of effective leaders.

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• Organizational Effectiveness [Show More]

  Most organizations claim that their people are their competitive advantage, but only a few actually achieve their claims or even know what they really mean. This course focuses on how the best organizations leverage the intellectual capital and unique abilities of their workforce to achieve extraordinary results. The course will focus on consulting and improving clients' strategic use of their workforce. Students will study a portfolio of high performance strategies for building and sustaining a competitive advantage. We will integrate the concepts of balanced scorecards and value chains, and students will learn to create organizational metrics for tracking and improving organizational effectiveness.

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Marketing

• Global Marketing [Show More]

  This course examines specific issues involved in developing and executing marketing strategies on a global scale as opposed to a domestic scale. The course is intended to provide a thorough understanding of global marketing strategies, including: (1) fundamental trends underlying convergence of world markets; (2) pitfalls and challenges of entering other countries; (3) ways to design global marketing strategies; (4) the impact of organization structure, management processes, culture, and people on global marketing strategy implementation; and (5) the important and unique role emerging markets play in global marketing strategies. The course will help you achieve your career goals as you work - as virtually all of you will - in or with companies that are active in the international marketplace as well as domestic companies who face active international competitors.

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• Brand Strategy [Show More]

  Most organizations understand that brands and brand equities are an essential source of sustainable competitive advantage; increasingly consider them among their most valuable assets and carefully hire and develop managers responsible for these assets. Surprisingly; however, decisions regarding pricing, advertising or distribution, etc. are made in isolation without fully considering their impact on brand equity, eroding brand loyalty and diminishing this key resource. Many organizations still assign individuals to manage these brand assets with little formal preparation or training – the supposition being that the selectees have learned what are highly-specialized and different-in-kind skills in their MBA programs or as field sales managers.

  Brand Management/Brand Strategy is an advanced MBA elective that will prepare you to recognize brand-building opportunities and to enjoy improved outcomes by:

  • Building understanding of strategic issues in branding; measuring the impact of marketing decisions on brand equity and building and managing brands and brand portfolios or categories.
  • Build familiarity and facility with the theories, concepts and tools/skills associated with a sophisticated creation and sustenance of brand equity.
  • Build familiarity and facility with many of the specific tasks specific to brand manager/category manager positions and organizations as they have evolved over the past decade.

  This course will: 1) develop understanding of branding strategies, tactics and tools available to managers regardless of their job titles or formal roles within organizations; 2) develop and build confidence using analytical and decision-making skills frequently useful in branding/brand-strategy-type decisions; 3) build confidence in your ability to quickly assess key issues and opportunities in a variety of situations, and then add value by clearly articulating your insights both orally and in writing, and 4) provide an enjoyable and intellectually stimulating environment to test new skills and thinking.

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• Marketing Research [Show More]

  This course is designed to prepare MBA students to be good consumers of marketing research. It will give you an overview of the tools and techniques used in marketing research to provide input to the many decisions that marketing, product, and brand managers have to make every day. It will provide an overview of the marketing research process, and give you insight into how to best prepare for commissioning or conducting a marketing research project and how to use the research information gained to help you in the decision-making process.

  What this course will not do is teach you how to DO market research. In my experience, most MBA students do not do marketing research; they are primarily consumers of marketing research. You will NOT learn a great deal about data tabulation or statistical techniques, though I may discuss this in class and point you in the right direction to gain more information on some methodology or statistical technique that intrigues you.

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• Pricing [Show More]

  Pricing is one of the most exciting and challenging topics in marketing. Mastery of pricing is essential to the profitable operation of any business. Nothing the marketer does has a more direct or greater impact on the bottom-line. It draws together all the diverse elements of marketing, such as product policy, advertising, market research, distribution, consumer behavior, competitive strategy and financial analysis. The various elements of marketing become an integrated whole when they are brought together for a pricing decision.

  The objective of this course is to bring to students the fun and excitement of this interesting subject and to help them master its intricacies, vagaries and complexities.

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• Health Care Marketing [Show More]

  Health Care Marketing is designed to teach students how to apply marketing concepts and tools to health care service and product management. It is an advanced marketing course that builds on the material covered in MBA 741, the core marketing course. There are two primary course goals:

  Goal #1: To help students recognize and solve health care marketing problems. Health care marketing problem-solving skills will improve decision-making for marketing managers as well as for managers in other functional areas.

  Goal #2: To develop the skills needed to structure, create, gain support, and execute strategic health care marketing plans. A marketing plan that is clearly written, supported by data, and insightful can lead to profitable results for services, products, and organizations.

  One of the key objectives of the Health Care Marketing course is to understand how value is defined and delivered in health care markets. Another objective is to explore how the marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion) is effectively managed in different types of health care organizations. Health care marketing theory and models will be reviewed; but our priority will be on case studies, best practices, and applications. A hallmark of the course is active student engagement and participation.

  The course is most valuable for students who will work for a health care organization, consult with health care organizations, or who are with a company that offers health care products or services. Others interested in understanding the dynamics of the market-driven forces in health care will also benefit.

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• Customer Relationship Management [Show More]

  This course is designed to prepare MBA students to be good consumers of marketing research. It will give you an overview of the tools and techniques used in marketing research to provide input to the many decisions that marketing, product, and brand managers have to make every day. It will provide an overview of the marketing research process, and give you insight into how to best prepare for commissioning or conducting a marketing research project and how to use the research information gained to help you in the decision-making process.

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Entrepreneurship

• Introduction to Entrepreneurship
• Business Plan Analysis [Show More]

  This course is designed to give the student an understanding of the analysis and writing of a successful business plan. We read 7 actual business plans and have an opportunity to meet and question the founder of the company. You will debate the pros and cons of the plans - and then hear from a local venture capitalist or investment banking person on their evaluation of the plan.

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• Entrepreneurial Marketing [Show More]

  This course covers the marketing tactics - from advertising to blogs to public relations to website design - needed for entrepreneurial companies to succeed. We begin with branding issues like product name, positioning and segment choice. Then we assess the criteria needed for an early stage company to evaluate tactical options - what works and how to make them more effective given a limited budget. The course uses cases and current examples from a broad range of industries ranging from technology ventures to consumer products, retail, financial, and service industries. Cases will be assigned for almost every class although we will also use current events to supplement our discussions.

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• Social Entrepreneurship [Show More]

  The primary objective of this course is to broaden your knowledge and understanding of social entrepreneurship as an innovative approach to addressing complex social needs. A secondary objective is to afford you the opportunity to engage in a business planning exercise which is designed to assist you personally or local nonprofit organizations to establish and launch social purpose entrepreneurial venture.

  Toward these ends, the course is organized as follows: In Part I, we will define social entrepreneurship and discuss the contextual factors influencing the emergence of the field. In Part II, we will review the characteristics and motivations of social entrepreneurs and present a framework for creating social purpose ventures. In Part III, we will discuss case studies of successful social purpose ventures and present typologies of revenue generating options for enterprising nonprofit and government organizations. In Part IV, a panel of judges will evaluate your business plans.

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• Business Demographics [Show More]

  Demographic forces shaping business development in the U.S. and abroad are examined, including immigration, the rise of new ethnic markets, corporate relocation, job creation dynamics and future labor needs. Emphasis will be on regional, national and global population shifts, cities and countries of growth and decline, emerging employment opportunities and marketing to various demographic subgroups (Hispanics, Asians, etc). National and international business opportunities will be considered in light of changing U.S. and global demographics, as will the implication of these changes for human resource management, marketing strategies, corporate location decisions and commercial real estate investment. Public and business policy issues will be discussed as they relate to the above topics.

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• Entrepreneurship and Minority Economics Development [Show More]

  This course is designed to promote and foster entrepreneurship as a strategy for accelerating minority upward mobility and wealth accumulation, strengthening the capacity and sustainability of local community development organizations, and enhancing the overall economic competitiveness of places, especially severely distressed urban and rural communities. The course objectives are threefold: (1) to broaden your knowledge and understanding of the history and contemporary state of minority entrepreneurship in America; (2) to explore the opportunities and threats that minority entrepreneurs will face in the years ahead in the increasingly speed driven and knowledge intensive global economy; and (3) to afford you the opportunity to work as a consultant on a project designed to foster and facilitate an entrepreneurial venture in the private, non-profit, or government sector.

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Operations

• Project Management [Show More]High-potential individuals can expect to spend much of their career participating in and leading projects. The reasons for this are twofold. First, along with strategy, effective implementation is now recognized as being critical to business success. Second, companies often use projects as proving-grounds for high-potential individuals; the rationale being that the skills required in managing a complex project are often the very skills required in managing a business.

  On some level every project is unique, but in many respects business projects (new-product launches, geographic expansions, M&A integrations, outsourcing initiatives, IT projects, etc.) have much in common. It is this commonality that allows managers to apply general project management concepts and tools to a wide variety of superficially-different projects.

  The aim of this course is to equip students with the concepts and tools necessary to be successful project managers (and team members). The goal of the course is not to take existing project-management specialists and further refine their expertise. Rather, the goal is to equip business generalists (i.e., any career concentration) with project management skills that will be useful throughout their careers. With that aim in mind, the course will focus on concepts and methods that are broadly applicable across a wide variety of business projects. The course will cover both qualitative and quantitative aspects of project management.

  The course will have three modules:

  • Fundamentals of Project Management
  • Complex and Risky Projects
  • External Parties and Contracts in Projects
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• Management Science Models [Show More]

  This course should be thought of as a course in quantitative puzzle solving. A number of important problems in business can be modeled as so-called “mathematical programming problems,” and effectively solved using the Excel Solver. While problems in the course involve at most several hundred decision variables, real life applications from industry typically involve many millions.

  The course discusses problems in supply chain management, project management, resource allocation, distribution, transportation and logistics, crew scheduling, nutrition, facility location and design, inventory control, bond refunding, and petroleum blending, amongst many others. The course incorporates some of the more important mathematical optimization techniques, including linear, integer, goal and dynamic programming. Extensive use is made of the Premium Excel Solver, although only basic Excel skills are required. The course involves no statistics for those students wishing to further avoid the subject.

  Emphasis is given to model formulation, sensitivity analysis, and interpretation of computer output, rather than to the details of the solution methodology. While several probabilistic models are discussed, the emphasis of the course is on deterministic models. A final group project involves devising an optimal diet using food found only at McDonald's.

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• Marketing Models [Show More]

  An introduction to the models which can be used to address marketing problems - both the more traditional spreadsheet models, which are best used to address more tactical problems, and systems dynamics models, which are best used to address high-level strategic problems. Material on spreadsheet and systems dynamics modeling techniques, data sources and uses, and marketing decision support systems will be included. A number of model-assisted marketing cases will be used.

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• Service Operations Management [Show More]

  This course is designed to provide students with the conceptual models and techniques needed to design, analyze and evaluate service delivery processes. The course will present business models, quantitative tools and techniques used by consultants and internal analysts in enhancing the effectiveness of service delivery processes. Emphasis will be placed on several major trends in services today, such as the integration of manufacturing and services in the supply chain, service blueprints for process improvement, the outsource of back room operations, sustainable services through franchising and multisided evaluation, revenue management, and management of customer contact centers.

  Guest speakers will present live case examples illustrating selected topics. An updated list of cases from a variety of service industries, including the airlines, computer industry, financial institutions and golf industry, will provide the context for this course that highlights the distinctive operations challenges faced by services today.

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• Supply Chain Management [Show More]

  Increases in product variety and customization in the past few years have posed challenges to firms in terms of delivering products to customers faster and more efficiently. With the prevalence of the usage of the Internet for business, electronic business transformations are occurring in every business. One of the fundamental enablers for electronic commerce is effective supply chain management. Thus, supply chain management has become the focus of attention of senior management in the industry today.

  This course considers management of a supply chain in a global environment from a managerial perspective. The focus is on analysis, management and improvement of supply chain processes and their adaptation to the electronic business environment. The course is divided into six related modules, namely, Inventory and Information Management, Distribution and Transportation, Global Operations, Supplier Management, Management of Product Variety and Electronic Supply Chains. Several new concepts including Prognostic Supply Chains, Build-to-Order, Collaborative Forecasting, Delayed Differentiation, Cross Docking, Global Outsourcing and Efficient Consumer Response will be discussed. The course will focus on traditional supply chain concepts and also introduce students to changes in supply chain management practices due to emergence of the Internet. Analytical and simulation approaches utilized in industry will also be introduced. At the end of the course, a student will have the necessary tools and metrics to evaluate a current supply chain and recommend design changes to supply chain processes.

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• Retail Operations

> Year One Curriculum detail